Honorable Councilmembers,

The following is a message that I sent to Councilmember Fergusson a couple of days ago, but since I have not yet received any sort of reply, I'm now trying the Council as a whole.

I'm trying to resolve the conflicting reports that I have heard about the timing and history of the recently approved Police Sergeants' contract. There are essentially two questions that I hope you can help me with.

1. In Councilmember Fergusson's Guest Opinion, she explicitly describes discussions of the sergeants' contract that occurred in early 2008, and I am trying to find out the date(s) of the meetings where those discussions occurred so that I can review the public record myself. This is a simple request, and I would hope that one of the Councilmembers who has professed a passion for open, transparent government could quickly provide me with a simple, direct response.
2. I'm also trying to figure out where the budgeted police sergeant raises for fiscal 2008-2009 appear in the lengthy budget report that was a subject of Council discussion last June. I don't really expect this to appear as a dedicated line item in the budget, but perhaps someone in Finance could educate me on where things like that are accounted for in the City budget.

Thank you for your assistance with this matter.

Regards,

Frank Tucker
Menlo Park resident

-----Original Message-----

From: Frank Tucker <email address removed> Sent: Feb 4, 2009 1:52 PM
To: kjfergusson_at_menlopark.org
Subject: Question about your guest opinion

Hello Councilmember Fergusson,

I have a couple of questions about this quote in the guest editorial that you wrote in this week's Almanac.

"In granting a raise to line officers last spring, council made it clear that the sergeants would be receiving a similar raise when their contract expired at the end of 2008. This issue was discussed in setting the 2008-09 budget, and the budget approved in June 2008 had money to pay for the sergeants' raises."

Could you tell me at which meetings the discussion of giving a "similar raise" to the sergeants as was given the line officers occurred? I'd like to review the public record (staff reports, minutes, videotapes) to better understand that point. If, however, that discussion only occurred in closed session with no public record, that would be worth knowing as well,even if no further details can be divulged.

I've looked through the budget documents from last June's Council budget discussion, and while police salaries are certainly listed under many categories, I could find no specific reference or line item related to projected raises for the sergeants. Since I may have missed the relevant section of those lengthy documents, could you point me to the section of those documents that describes the budgeted raises in question?

Thank you for your assistance in clarifying these points.

Regards,

Frank Tucker
Menlo Park resident Received on Fri Feb 06 2009 - 22:50:30 PST